Press Releases
about Prisoners' Rights

Tyler’s case shows how bias, fear, and discrimination drive wrongful convictions — and why confronting racial injustice in the legal system remains urgent today.

Invading privacy as well as "barking up the wrong tree"

This case presents two questions: first, whether, under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution, Union City Police Department officers possessed probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of the defendant’s vehicle based exclusively on the alleged odor of cannabis, and second, whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to overturn the defendant’s conviction. The ACLU’s Criminal Reform Legal Project and State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ACLU of Tennessee filed an amicus brief arguing first, that after Tennessee’s legalization of hemp in 2019, an officer’s alleged detection of the odor of cannabis is insufficient to establish probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle in Tennessee, and second, that the court of appeals improperly held that it lacked jurisdiction to overturn the defendant’s conviction.